A variety of network management platforms exist to assist network administrators with installing and configuring network resources and services. In many platforms, a management server can be used to issue commands to hosts or other network nodes to manage the configuration of the network hosts, underlying clients or other devices. As part of the management of comparatively large-scale and other networks, a network management platform can have the responsibility of maintaining a set of valid user IDs and resources and privileges associated with those user Ids.
It is a not infrequent occurrence in network operations that a user can undergo a change in status in their employment, subscription, or other relationship to the network to which they are registered. In a corporate setting, for example, a user can have a change in marital status and a resulting change in their legal name, or can depart from a company or other organization. In those and other cases, the accumulated files, user profiles, processes, or other resources associated with the user ID for that user may remain in the network.
In existing network management platforms, a systems administrator confronted with a set of obsolete user IDs has no particular tools or services available to them to locate and remote the undesired residual user IDs, and/or associated files, user profiles, processes, or other resources. Those managers therefore must typically access each individual data store, user machine, or other nodes on the managed network, and look for the out-of-date user data. It may thus be desirable to provide methods and systems that overcome these network management difficulties, and permit an administrator or other user to track down and update or remove obsolete user IDs and related user data.